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Pepper VS Temptation - Part 11
🕑 Added 2020-10-18 15:47:42 +0000 UTC(Part 0) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) (------) (Part 12) (Part 13) (Part 14) (Part 15) (Part 16) (Part 17) (Ebook)
To save the day, Pepper's going to have to be patient, resist temptation, and collaborate with a secret admirer on Charlemagne's team.
Pepper VS Temptation - Part 11
~A Persephone and Tritonia Story~
(edited by Tiliquain and Secretskunk)
I told Charlie everything.
Well, everything except the finer details of how Septimus had helped me. I didn't want to get him in trouble and I needed him to be able to get to Helja in an emergency. Luckily, Charlie was far more concerned with knowing everything I'd learned about Helja. What Helja was, how she operated, why she'd been sick, what I'd done to help her, and how her transformative systems worked. Charlie even recorded a full verbal description of Helja that she could send to Tritonia to turn into a full-body composite sketch. The other thing I was grilled on is why I did what I did and how I defeated the crystal generator.
No matter how hard I tried to cheer her up, the only scent I got from Charlie was deeply irritated mare. It had a metallic undertone that made me feel anxious on top of the nervousness I already had.
After five hours, with my throat sore from talking so long, she dumped me in the spare quarters. They felt more like a long tubular metal hallway than a living space. All the classified POSC materials, knickknacks, old photos, tools, cookware, cleaning supplies, and every other bit of character had been removed. Even some of the drawers and storage spaces were locked as tight as the front door.
Hopping in the shower didn't give me any joy, but it was fascinating. My fur was softer and smoother than most fur I'd touched and it had an odd relationship with water and grime. Dirt and stuff came out without even needing much soap. Drying off was bizarre because the water didn't even want to stay on me.
Being naked in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the shower door is what finally softened my frown. At least I was locked up while looking like a hybrid bombshell of a hottie. My tail started wagging by making waves that traveled down all four feet of its length. I didn't just look like any doggo, I looked like a golden-lab-colored Irish setter hybrid with beautiful red hair, roo hips, and a furry dragon-roo tail. My fur was on the short side in most places, so it didn't obscure my curves and dried pretty quick. I was too emotionally exhausted to get aroused by anything I saw, but I was overflowing with love for myself: something that was pretty rare for me.
Despite how happy my new look made me, the waiting that followed was grueling.
There was no indication of what was going to happen to me or how long I had to wait to find out. I was allowed no visitors and I was only let out to repeat every test that had already been run on me. Spacing the tests out led to me being in less pain, but I still didn't feel like doing much of anything.
The only clothes I was given were either super baggy or stretchy enough to accommodate my changed body shape. Persephone had cut tail holes and such in my old outfits, but they still fit pretty poorly. My six-breasted upper torso was bigger and so were my hips. Even Percy's boxers failed to fit me right because my balls were so much bigger than hers. Hers were a bit smaller than apricots and mine were as big as apples, challenging Charlie's for supremacy. Charlie had it easier than I did, though, because her gigantic stature helped obscure the size of hers. Mine were proportionally much larger. Nothing I put on that was even remotely form-fitting could hide them.
Abrams ended up donating some sweatpants and t-shirts when I reported this wardrobe problem to Charlie. Percy cut tail holes in the pants and they were okay, but I gave up on underwear. The bra situation was worse, but I was perfectly comfortable without one due to whatever magic Helja had worked on my anatomy. My test results were being kept secret from me since I was in the brig, but chatter I'd heard between Kirkii and Septimus pointed at me not being quite biological anymore.
When they put me on the treadmill, they were fascinated by the efficiency of my leaping strides, the drastic increase in both speed and endurance, and the way my tits and dangly bits pulled up against my body. I didn't tell them that I could hear the intercom in my head because I felt like they had enough to deal with and I didn't want them spending too much time on my brain. Asking Helja what was going on there was way less invasive and I knew she'd just be flat honest with me. Plus, telling them about it might lead them to find a radio transceiver in my brain and then Charlie would likely think Helja was remote controlling me with it or something. I wasn't worried. Any alien as concerned with consent as Helja wasn't into mind control.
I ended up dressing like someone who never had to leave the house: sweat pants and shirts two sizes too big. It sucked because no matter how I moved, part of my outfit didn't want to move with me. Seams were in the wrong places and creases were an endless source of irritation.
By the third day, I was spending most of my time in the nude because my fur was far more comfortable than my clothing and the chill in the air from being thousands of feet below sea level didn't bother me. You'd think that the temptation from being naked would lead me to play with my new parts, but I felt like the world's greatest screwup and whenever I thought about sex, I thought about the look on Percy's face when she told me she needed a break.
Developing a workout routine using the railing on the upper bunk kept me busy and not as depressed for a while, but my muscles barely noticed pull-ups, inverted sit-ups, and everything else I tried. It was scary how strong my core was, how strong every part of me was. At one point, I was doing one-armed handstand pushups without breaking a sweat. Even my tail was strong enough for me to hang from it effortlessly or support my whole body weight when I leaned back on it like a kangaroo.
None of this could make up for the complete lack of entertainment, I'd never been off the internet for this long without having someone to talk to. I got so bored that I searched every nook and cranny in the room. Under the bunk across from mine, stuck into the space between the bunk's frame and the wall, was a copy of "The Cardinal of the Kremlin" by Tom Clancy. If it had been in English, I would've happily read it again, but it was literally Greek to me! A small consolation was that the book was so marked up with circled words and little notes in the margins that it was probably unreadable anyway. The strange thing about the notes is that they were all written in Cyrillic. I put the book back where I'd found it as a time capsule for someone who could read either of those languages.
The only other reading material in the entire room had been left on the kitchen table. It was a thick ring-bound stack of paper with "Pan-Oceanic Safety Congress Charter and Code of Conduct" written in thick black letters on a light blue piece of cardstock that served as the cover. Probably exactly Charlie had planned, I was so desperate for entertainment that I read it from cover to cover. My main conclusion from reading it was that I was an idiot. I'd overlooked some rather terrifying scenarios that could happen during first contact and I'd been very lucky when it came to her.
The least boring thing I did was learn how to control my tail. By the morning of the fifth day when I was having some blueberry French toast, I could manipulate a fork or a knife with it. At lunch, I tried using my tail to eat the tomato soup that came with my grilled cheese sandwich, but I stopped because I was making a mess. I cleaned the bowl when I was done eating and practiced spooning water out of it into the mustard yellow plastic tumbler I was using as a water glass.
As I was doing that, Charlie's voice came through the intercom and made me jump. "Be ready in ten, we're going to have a chat."
Finding the best-looking combo of baggy t-shirt and sweatpants was a lost cause, but I took it on anyway. What I settled on was a bright red t-shirt with "University of Cincinnati Career Fair, Fall 1999," written in a nearly-illegible white brush script and military olive green sweat pants with the Bearcat logo. It was supposed to look like a paw print made with a C as its base, but looked more like a C with a mohawk to me. That same silly symbol was on the back of the career day shirt.
Charlie opened the door right on schedule and walked in holding a swollen manilla folder under her right arm. She looked less irritated than when she'd locked me up, but I could see a lecture brewing behind her eyebrows. In that moment, I missed the way she used to look at me...a lot.
I came up to the door as she entered, expecting her to bring me somewhere.
She closed and secured the door as she said, "Have a seat, we're gonna have our chat right here."
"Okay." I took a seat at the circular four-person metal-rimmed table that was straight out of a kitschy sixties diner. It was closer to the door so it didn't use up as much floor space in the kitchen area. Otherwise, running back and forth between cabinets would've been awkward.
Charlie put the manilla folder on the table only to curse and pull it back off when she noticed it was sitting in a puddle of water.
"Oh! Shit! I'm so sorry!" I said as I grabbed a hand towel and started wiping up the puddle I'd made while trying to train my tail how to use a spoon.
After looking at the folder and its contents, Charlie said, "Looks like we're okay." She waited for me to dry the table off before setting the folder back down and taking a seat. Her blonde horse mane was especially shiny and she smelled like she'd just gotten out of the shower.
I also smelled a bit of Percy on her and was instantly jealous. How dare they have fun when I was locked up. It was petty of me, but it was still how I felt. I kept quiet while Charlie checked a page of notes she'd put on top of the paperwork.
A few seconds later, she looked up from the folder and glared at me. "Before we talk about how the fallout from your actions will affect you, I want you to understand what you've done." She paused. "You've handed me the hottest potato there is. First contact with an alien race is the most momentous thing that has happened in history, period. Things will never ever be the same. The discussions I've had over the past few days have been the most heated and chaotic I've ever experienced. Nearly everyone in our organization who has enough clearance to know about this is losing nights of sleep and taking personal days. Yesterday, Gillon took leave for the first time in three years because he was overwhelmed by the upheaval this has caused. Now, given what I've just said, how do you imagine I feel?"
"Overwhelmed?" I offered.
"Like I've been flushed out an airlock without a spacesuit." She sighed.
"I would've told you earlier, I just--"
"No, this is not where you get to make excuses," she said. "Discovering aliens was on my list of guaranteed bad days. This, however, has been a total clusterfuck. I haven't slept more than five hours a night since I interrogated you. The geopolitical ramifications of this are pure insanity. We were even talking about whether we have a right to hide the presence of alien life from the rest of the world. At one point we called an ethics professor. A fucking ethics professor! Do you realize how fucked up that is?"
"Yes." I looked at the tabletop, hiding from the intensity in Charlie's eyes.
"It gets worse. When I told them Helja existed, they deployed a small fleet. When I had to tell them that you lied about her existence and became an alien hybrid behind my back, they deployed two subs with Mark 48 torpedoes. It took me two days to convince them not to dissolve the POSC and ship both you and Helja to Centralia."
My eyes teared up. Everyone had been counting on me and now we had torpedoes tipped with nukes pointed at us.
Even if I deserved it, I didn't want to be sent away, but I was willing to go just about anywhere other than Centralia. Details about what went on in Centralia were beyond my clearance, but judging by the spine-chilling Torchwood-esque stories I'd heard, I didn't want us to be anywhere near there.
Knowing she had my attention, she continued, "Before I tell you the results of my negotiating on your behalf, I need you to promise me something."
The seriousness on Charlie's face was scaring me. I felt like crying, but I didn't want to break down in front of her. "What is it?" I asked.
"That you will follow my orders and the POSC Code of Conduct," she said. "And not just the words as written or spoken, I need you to promise that you'll follow the spirit of those rules. If you know what an order means, but you go to a linguistic gray area to get around it, I will consider it a breach of trust. Think this over very carefully before you answer."
I didn't need to think it over. "Yes, I promise to follow your orders and the code of conduct faithfully."
"That seemed way easier than it should've been. Are you sure you really mean that?" Charlie asked.
I'd known Charlie would ask me something like this and I'd prepared some talking points to try and salvage this situation. "When I was reading the first contact quarantine procedures, I was cringing the entire time. And the night after I read them, I had a nightmare where I was the person that caused the plague in 'Twelve Monkeys.' Before that, I never even considered that a friendly alien could kill us all with flesh-eating bacteria or something. It was just dumb luck that she was synthetic and had no dangerous pathogens. I think I know why the POSC has so many rules now. Lots of people far smarter than me put time and effort into analyzing previous disasters and thinking about what could go wrong. It's a lot like the ordinance safety practices they taught me during my SEAL training and I don't know why I allowed myself to basically sleep through the training you gave us. I've read everything you gave me and I'm ready to be put back on the team, barring any medical issues we come across."
"Let me be clear: you are off the team," she said. "Your actions endangered the lives of everyone on this base. We're lucky we're not a crater on the ocean floor."
My lip was trembling and my eyes were wet.
Charlie opened the manilla folder and pulled out a certificate. "This is your general discharge from the United States military."
I couldn't hold the tears back anymore, they started trailing down the sides of my muzzle and dripping on the table as I sniffled and tried to maintain my composure.
Charlie got up, grabbed a cloth napkin and handed it to me before sitting back down. She was quiet for a minute while I worked to get my emotions under control and then said, "Even with all the chaos, I did carve out a way forward. You're going to become a contractor, an intermediary between the POSC and Helja."
I blew my nose into the napkin she'd provided. It was odd because my wet doggo nose blew straight forward and I still wasn't used to that. There was a lot more to blow, too, so it took me a bit.
"D-do I have a choice?" I asked.
"We can send you and Helja to Centralia, like they were planning originally," Charlie said. "I have no idea what would happen after that, though. Centralia has a rather...unique approach to things."
A cold shiver ran down my spine. "Contractor sounds perfect, actually. Would I be able to stay on base?"
"Frankly, I don't know how to get you the clearance to live off base. You've been classified as a Sentient NPO."
Looking down at my furry arms, I said, "I expected that, honestly." I used the napkin to soak up the tears that were still in my muzzle fur, finding that the tears hadn't clung to it nearly as much as I'd expect.
"You're going to have to be on your best behavior. If you're even thinking about breaking the rules, I need you to come talk to me. We cannot afford another scandal."
My ears lowered as I slumped in my chair. "Sorry."
She put her hand on my paw. "I know you're sorry, what I need is for you to stay true to what you said when you made that pitch for me to put you back on the team."
I grabbed her hand and squeezed. It was so good to feel her horse fur again. "I will! I promise!"
"I'll hold you to that." She took her hand back.
"How'd you even get them to agree? I assumed they'd want to keep me away from Helja."
"It wasn't easy. Everyone's green with jealousy that I'm going to meet, and start working with, with an alien intelligence. They offered officers with anthropology, psychology, or foreign policy degrees that were more qualified so they could get a foothold in our operation. Dissuading them was easy, however: I simply showed them the composite sketch Tritonia did of Helja and a high-res image of your body with as little censorship as I could get away with. Then I asked them if they were willing to risk Helja hybridizing one of their officers." She smirked.
My mouth dropped open as I blushed. "You didn't."
"I absolutely did."
I blushed deeper.
"For them, seeing someone who was previously human, in your current form, had a lot of shock value. After letting that sink in, I made the case that we're far less likely to make her feel like an outsider since we already have hybrids on our team. Then, I pointed out that your relationship with her yielded a solution to a problem that would've forced us to forfeit the Repository."
"Why would you trust me with this position?" I asked. "Let's be honest, I made the screwup of the century."
"Because you've always struggled to be a good soldier. You're the type that asks too many questions and wants to understand things that should be irrelevant to following your orders. As a contractor, you'll spend some of your time as a Helja expert, working to help us make decisions regarding her. And when you're brought in on a mission, you'll be given much clearer direction on exactly how you're supposed to fit in. The downside is that you're gonna be left out of the loop sometimes. But I think that's advantageous for you because you don't do well when you're given too many things to focus on."
"Huh, I never would've thought of it that way," I said.
"My biggest fear is that you'll get your own ideas about how to approach problems and go off on tangents without coming to me first. That cannot happen anymore. Do you understand?"
The stern way she said that got me to say, "Yes ma'am."
"At ease," she said.
I relaxed a bit in my chair.
My show of respect for her rank put her at ease too. She had a slight amused smile now. I liked how the upward curve on the sides of her mare muzzle softened her gaze.
"If you ever think I'm making an idiotic play or you think you'll have trouble following orders, take me aside in private and explain your reasoning," she said. "We need to have more functional communication from now on."
"About the taking you aside thing." A nervous twitch in my spine accompanied my saying, "Can I offer a bit of critique?"
"Sure." She leaned back in her chair, further lowering the intensity of our discussion.
"When I asked you about extraterrestrials, you made it much harder for me to want to explain what was going on," I said.
She narrowed her eyes at me as her ears fell. "You better not be trying to pin what you did on me."
I held my paws in front of myself in a sign of surrender. "No, no, it's just, when I ask you about procedures for different random scenarios, I'm trying to understand the rules. It's how I learn."
She scoffed. "But you ask the damnedest questions at the worst times."
"I can't help when I think of things and I have ADHD. If I don't ask those questions when I think of them, I'll forget them and move onto something else," I said.
"Keep a notebook and write them down. Then go ask Tritonia, Kirkii, or Gillon about them. All of them have more patience for hypotheticals than I do."
"Okay, I'll do that."
"Good." Charlie scooted back and stood up, flicking her horse tail to pull it out of the back of her chair. "Let's go to the control room so we can get all the required signatures and get your biometrics updated. After that, you'll have a high enough clearance for us to share the results of your medical eval. You passed, but there's some stuff you need to see."
"Cool!" I got up and followed her into the main entrance. As I was flicking off the Librarian's terminal behind Charlie's back, I heard a light tapping sound. My cute folded-over Irish setter ears flipped open as I turned my head toward it.
What I saw was more like what someone sees on the display of a military-grade thermal camera. There were colors I didn't have words for, like purples, yellows, and reds that were bending my brain. They were in the form of a waist-high half-meter-wide sphere with thirty short tentacles, and three long ones, coming out of it. Surprisingly, it was locomoting by rolling on them. It was like watching a living koosh ball and it appeared to be an efficient way to get around. In fact, it was moving at a swift jog and making the sound of fingers lightly tapping on a dinner plate. A strange pressure built in my chest just before I barked at it like a dog that just spotted a squirrel.
My tail shot straight up as it jumped. Three eye stalks popped out of it to look at me. Then it hurriedly got up to the door that led to Gillon's lab and slipped a long slender tentacle into the locking mechanism.
"What the?" Charlie said.
My ears folded in half again the moment Charlie started speaking, protecting my hearing from the change in volume. I blushed so hard about barking in front of her that my cheeks burned under my fur.
As the bulkhead door opened, I said, "A mini Spectral Thief! I think it's heading to Gillon's lab!" I started running at top speed, but the baggy clothes were getting in the way, so I tore them off as I tried to keep up.
"Pepper! Wait!" Charlie called after me.
"We've been compromised, they have Tritonia's new charger and a PIKL unit!" Abrams called out over the intercom.
"We have to stop them or Tritonia's gonna be in trouble," I yelled back.
Charlie hit a button on the Librarian's terminal and the intercom came on. "Slow them down, Pepper and I are en route." She ran after me.
I was going four times Charlie's top running speed. Her anthro horse legs made her faster than a normal human, but I had something special going on. Not as special as Boom, but still.
On the way, I grabbed a fire axe out of a fire cabinet.
When I got to Gillon's lab, I got that same pressure in my chest and another couple barks came out. Then I was growling at the two waist-high balls of tentacles outside the open bulkhead door. One was holding the rifle part of a PIKL unit, the other was holding the battery pack. They backed away from the door and into the hallway as they aimed it at me.
Before I could do anything to help, I heard Tritonia's voice calling out, "Straight ahead at your feet, kick it."
A third one came out of the lab, dragging Tritonia's new charger behind it.
The bulkhead door clanged as Boom burst through it in the ADS 3000 diving suit. She stumbled as she tried to kick the tentacle ball that had Tritonia's charger and broke the the bulkhead door's locking mechanism clean off with one of the diving suit's left arm.
My ears clamped shut as a loud bang erupted behind me. The two mini Spectral Thieves were trying to hit me with the PIKL unit, so I dove to the floor and slid a few meters to the curved wall opposite the bulkhead door. My nipples and sheath pulled back to avoid getting roughed up by the floor. I'd forgotten I was buck naked.
A bang on the wall ahead of me was accompanied by a clang as Boom tried to grab the Spectral Thief that had the charger and ended up scraping one of the suit's manipulators on the floor instead. It made a sound like a fork being scraped on a dinner plate, only much louder.
It was hard to look down at your feet in the ADS 3000, so Boom was struggling to see even though the one with the charger was right in front of her.
Tritonia said, "Right in front of your left foot, just kick it into the wall."
Boom lost her balance as she tried to kick it again and broke the intercom box on the wall next to the lab's door as she reached out to steady herself.
As I hopped to my feet, I got hit by the PIKL right in the left breast. It stung like the dickens and felt like getting punched in a bar brawl. Growling, I lunged toward the two that were shooting at me with my axe held high.
I brought the fire axe down on that one holding the rifle while the other one dropped the battery and tried to grab me. The axe bit into the tentacles holding the rifle and the rifle clattered to the floor as its long tentacles lost their camouflage. The tentacles looked like they were made out of translucent blue-gray glass with a dark skeleton at the center now that they were visible in the normal visual range.
The other one tried to immobilize my arms with its tentacles before I could make another swing. On pure instinct I dropped the fire axe and pulled its tentacles up to my maw and bit down hard.
The soft outer skin on the tentacles provided no protection as I crushed their inner skeleton with terrifying pressure. My teeth should have cracked, but they didn't. As I severed the tentacles, I got a terrible caustic taste in my mouth! The tentacles twitched erratically as their camouflage failed.
I grabbed the one that was trying to pick its PIKL rifle back up and pulled it a couple feet off the ground even though it was fucking heavy. Then I slammed it back down as hard as I could, snarling. It cushioned the blow with the tentacles underneath it so I picked up the fire axe and took another swing. It dodged me.
Abrams and Gillon lit it up with their PIKL units since they could see the tentacles that had lost camouflage. It soon stopped cold, smoke rising from it.
My ears closed tight to protect me from the loud bangs their PIKL units made on the target as they turned its surfaces into exploding balls of plasma. I brought the pointy side of the axe down on the mini Spectral Thief that was now trying to disentangle itself from my legs. The steel spike plunged into the spherical part and it was rendered inert.
Charlie yelled, "Boom, get out of the damned diving suit. Pepper, chop off the tentacles holding the charger. Gillon and Abrams, open fire on the other one." She was hunched over, trying to catch her breath.
The one pulling Tritonia's charger frantically tried to move faster, but it couldn't roll and the charger was scraping on the floor. I planted my feet and chopped downwards like I was trying to split a stubborn log. The tentacles holding Tritonia's charger came clean off and when the axe's blade hit the floor, a chunk of it flew off toward the bulkhead door.
Boom put her fingers in her ears as Abrams and Gillon zapped the other one, which stopped moving soon after.
"Boom, grab the charger and pick a circuitous path to the other side of the base and a few levels down. Then leave it in a lockup and come back," Charlie said.
"Yes ma'am," Boom said as she grabbed the charger. It was about the size of a backpack, but the weight didn't seem to be bothering her much as she disappeared down the corridor.
Gillon turned to look at me, "Pepper?"
Abrams' eyes jumped down to my crotch while Gillon tried to keep his eyes on my face.
I immediately turned around so they couldn't stare at my giant balls. Looking back over my shoulder, I said, "Yep!"
I was now facing Charlie, which was only slightly less awkward. If I tried to face away from her too, I'd be showing my junk to Tritonia who was still mounted on the diving suit. I just couldn't win.
"What in the bloody hell happened to you?" Gillon said.
"You'll get a full debriefing the moment this situation is wrapped up. Get Percy over here to help you repair the door and the intercom box. Ask her to secure the door against electronic attacks. And while you're waiting for her, tell everyone on base to engage manual locks in addition to electronic ones," Charlie said. "Abrams, I want you to get Tritonia in a good position to watch this corridor and have your PIKL unit ready the whole time they're making repairs."
They both said "Yes ma'am" before working on their assignments.
Charlie walked up to me and said, "Report."
I told her exactly how the battle went down and answered her questions while she caught her breath. She seemed content to let me stand awkwardly naked in the corridor. Her eyes didn't stray below my neck much at all, but she seemed a bit more playful than before.
When I'd answered everything, Charlie said, "You did a lot of good today, Pepper, but this was your last time running off without orders. From now on, you have to get approval to help the rest of the team. If you want this to work, I need you to let me do my job. Also, I want you to focus on Helja for now. I want her happy and cared for so that she capitulates to our rules and genuinely enjoys working with us."
"That all sounds good. Are there rules about what I can and can't do with her?"
"You cannot share sensitive information or help her do anything that would violate the code of conduct. Other than that, I don't care: you could try out every position in the Kama Sutra with your new alien girlfriend and I wouldn't give a shit."
"W-what!?"
Charlie glanced at my crotch and then raised an eyebrow.
I blushed so hard, my skin tingled under my fur.
Letting me stew, she turned and started walking back toward the main entryway, swishing her tail. "Let's go make your new position official."
Still recovering from embarrassment and trying not to think about the way my balls swayed as I walked, I said, "I don't think I can express how thankful I am that you're gonna let me stay."
"Thank me by doing the best job possible."
"I'll give it my all," I promised.
As we entered the main entryway, she said, "I'm looking forward to forming a partnership between the POSC and Hel--" She stopped in her tracks.
She was staring in the direction of the Librarian's terminal. Looking past her, I said, "Moootherfuuuucking fuck FUCK!"
Apparently, the larger Spectral Thieves had been busy while we were distracted: the Librarian's main terminal was missing.
END OF PART 11
I’d like to acknowledge my $20 patrons, Arkona Kothe, Navajo Demar, UBA, and Warialinth for helping make all this possible. Thank you! Thanks to all my other patrons as well. Every one of you rocks!
(Part 0) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) (------) (Part 12) (Part 13) (Part 14) (Part 15) (Part 16) (Part 17) (Ebook)
Comments
Reid
Great chapter! Pepper must have a horseshoe up her butt because she seems to have gotten off the hook relatively unscathed, all things considered. She still has an uphill battle in repairing her relationships with Percy and Charlie though.
Zmeydros
Due to NPOs and the danger surrounding them and the history of how badly things have gone in the past, an alien in the Repository is a worst case scenario for the military. When there's a breach of protocol, it's seen as Charlie's fault and if she doesn't come down on the person who caused it hard, she could lose her position. The way things turned out doesn't matter to the military's top brass because all the regs they expect people to follow were written after unfortunate accidents to prevent future deaths. They realize things went well this time, but under military protocol, the outcome isn't the only thing that matters when it comes to punishment. If a person isn't punished for going outside the rules, they worry that others will get the idea that that's acceptable behavior. On a base where there are objects stored that could wipe out millions of people, someone operating outside the rules is terrifying. Because the person may not realize the damage they're going to do until they do it. So Charlemagne had to bargain with the higher-ups to not have Pepper tried for treason for collaborating with an alien intelligence. And she's the commander and must pass down the judgement from those above her. That's why she was shy about being in a relationship with her subordinates to begin with. And as far as Pepper not being able to be ordered when she's a contractor and hasn't signed the paperwork yet, the base was under fire. When a military base is under fire, the commanding officer is allowed to order anyone on that base regardless of their civilian/military personnel status. I have three friends who spent time in various positions within the military and I asked them about this scenario to figure out what would happen. I know it's harsh and I'd say Charlie's in as tough a spot as Pepper is on this one. She's being forced to carry out orders by people above her.
tazkol
so curious observations here, first off i get Charlies her friend and trying to help her but she comes off as highly manipulative in this conversation to a degree that honestly makes her intentions seem less so. Wouldn't Peppers discharge technically make ordering her a grey area? as what accounts to a civilian contractor seems like Charlies direct control over her would be lessoned not increased? second would be seems like if this got out the shitstorm would be in Peppers favor, she peacefully met and befriended an advanced alien capable of offering numerous scientific advancements and saved a base. Over all this feels shady at best
